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Three Ways to Graduate with 30–40 Best Friends

Gaining new friends isn't always at the top of the agenda for incoming students, but it will be soon. You will meet some of the most amazing people here, and within a month it will be obvious that the more time you can spend learning from these people and building relationships with them, the better. The majority of your fellow students will become casual acquaintances ("I talked to him at happy hour once") which is great if you're looking for a job later in life, but a select few will become great friends ("this guy is coming to my wedding"). These incredibly strong relationships are created in a number of ways, but for this class note I'm going to call out the ones that worked for me:

1. Travel—Bonds are formed through shared experiences, good or bad, and traveling typically provides a lot of both. Priority goes to trips in your last semester.
2. Socializing Events—I stuck to three per week (you'll have the opportunity for more), and that felt reasonable. CBS Matters is a must.
3. Get Involved—Focus on one or two things and dive in. A cool side benefit of this is that, in addition to getting to know students, you may also get to know the school's administrators.

Just like your career progression up until this point was really on you, so is making the most out of business school. Finally, in the words of a second-year who was in tears giving advice to a couple of first-years, "just make sure that when your two years are up, you have something to cry about."